New York Times, Foreign Affairs Feature CNS Expert’s Call for Israel to Admit Having Nuclear Weapons

On August 25 Dr. Avner Cohen, senior fellow at the Monterey Institute's James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, along with Marvin Miller of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published an op-ed article in the New York Times titled “Bringing Israel’s Bomb out of the Basement.” The two scholars argue that it is time for Israel to change course and shed the policy of neither confirming nor denying possession of nuclear weapons. That policy of “opacity” is in their view counterproductive to the security needs of Israel because it erodes the “moral edge” in any peace negotiations. Cohen and Miller also recently published a longer version of their article in Foreign Affairs.

On August 26 the prominent Israeli news service Haaretz published an interview with Dr. Cohen in which he expands on his arguments for Israel to finally admit to its nuclear weapons program. In the same interview, Dr. Cohen also acknowledges that the Israeli public may not ready for this debate.

Nonetheless, Dr. Cohen launches the conversation with the detailed analysis contained in his new book, “The Worst Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain with the Bomb,” which will be published on September 24.